Preview: Il Lombardia. World's best climbers and puncheurs fight for final monument of 2022

On the 8th of October the peloton will take on the final monument of the season: Il Lombardia! The Italian classic is one of the hardest one-day races in the calendar, where endurance and climbing prowess will be tested and many of the world's best climbers will be on the hunt for success.

The opposite of last year, the route will this year see the start in Bergamo and the finish is Como, hence seeing a completely different profile, however with very meaningful climbs present in the route. The race will be 253 kilometers long and feature around 4900 meters of climbing. The race early on features the Passo di Ganda (9.3Km; 7.1%) where Tadej Pogacar made the decisive attack last year en route to his win.

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Competitively, the race is only expected to really start firing up at the Madonna del Ghisallo. 8.6 kilometers at 6.2% that finish with 61 kilometers to go, but with no Muro di Sormano following. Instead, the race will follow a more traditional finale. The riders will ride through San Fermo della Battaglia for the first time with 27 kilometers to go, and through the finish with 22. More on that below, the riders will quickly head into the other side of town to climb into Civiglio.

Civiglio is one of cycling’s most iconic climbs at this point, featuring 4.2 kilometers at constant almost 10% gradients. It is one for the pure climbers, at the end of such a hard day and with no restbite. It summits with just 17 kilometers to go and what follows is a short but very technical descent back into town, where the race can be won or lost. However the riders will still have one more ascent to go as they return to San Fermo della Battaglia. The is 2.7 kilometers at over 7%, and will summit with only just over 5 kilometers to go, with a fast descent back into Como for the finish.

The preliminary startlist includes elite riders such as: Thymen Arensman, Romain Bardet, Damiano Caruso, Mikel Landa, Matej Mohoric, Jakob Fuglsang, Dylan Teuns, Michael Woods, Giulio Ciccone, Jay Vine, Quinten Hermans, Domenico Pozzovivo, Tao Geoghegan Hart, Daniel Martínez, Carlos Rodríguez, Pavel Sivakov, Adam Yates, Sergio Higuita, Jai Hindley, ALeksandr Vlasov, Rigoberto Urán, Ruben Guerreiro, Miguel Ángel López, Vincenzo Nibali, Jonas Vingegaard, Julian Alaphilippe, Tadej Pogacar, João Almeida, Guillaume Martin, Alex Aranburu, Alejandro Valverde, Enric Mas, Warren Barguil and Lorenzo Fortunato.

CyclingUpToDate prediction:
**** Tadej Pogacar
*** Enric Mas, Sergio Higuita
** Alejandro Valverde, Adam Yates, Julian Alaphilippe
* Bauke Mollema, Romain Bardet, Jonas Vingegaard, Vincenzo Nibali